This is a quick review of Tim Ferriss’ new book Tools of Titans.
Tools of Titans is, for the most part, a compilation of excerpts from Tim Ferriss’ podcast “The Tim Ferriss Show”. Here he interviews experts and high performers in fields like business, science, sports, investing, technology, military and more.
While Tim Ferriss may be best known for his “four hour” book series or popularizing the concept of lifestyle design, I think it is actually the podcast that is by far and away his biggest contribution.
Why? Because it makes access to otherwise exclusive individuals freely available to everyone.
Tim Ferriss’ biggest contribution is democratizing access to high value people.
These guests are busy, successful, “important” people you wouldn’t normally get a chance to interact with. Now you can spend several hours soaking in what they have to say. That’s unprecedented, as far as I can tell.
And these interviews aren’t the platitude-driven formalities you’d find on a network television special. These are in-depth, lengthy, meaningful conversations. Guests genuinely bare their souls on a surprisingly consistent basis due to Ferriss’ particular and incisive interviewing style.
Tools of Titans contains the highlights of these interviews, boiled down and distilled and neatly organized in a thematic way. There’s a lot of quality information in here and I’d recommend picking up a copy.
Tools of Titans is a long book but it isn’t meant to be read straight through. You can skip around the different sections depending on your interest.
The book is divided into three parts: health, wealth and wisdom. This is in reference to Ben Franklin’s famous aphorism, “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”
In Tools of Titans you will find expert advice and opinions on the following topics:
- Investing
- Entrepreneurship
- Stoicism
- Meditation and mindfulness
- Software engineering
- Mountaineering
- Effective altruism
- Intermittent fasting
- The ketogenic diet
- Weightlifting
- Ethics
- Systems thinking
- Writing, fiction and non-fiction
- Journalism
- Acting
- Acro yoga
- Negotiation
- Longevity
- Gymnastics strength training
- Psychedelic experience and research
- Jiu jitsu
- Musical composition
- Blogging
- Wealth and money management
And much more.
Some of my favourite interviews include Naval Ravikant, Alain de Botton, Maria Popova, BJ Miller, David Heinemeier Hansson and Tara Brach.
It’s often said that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
In light of that, Tools of Titans is a unique way to spend time with some of the most successful people in the world, in really any field you want to explore. That’s a totally unprecedented opportunity now available to any reader of this book.
Is it worth getting Tools of Titans if you’ve already listened to the podcast?
If you’ve listened to every single podcast episode, maybe not. While there is some content in the book that is not from the podcast, the vast majority of it is excerpts from podcast interviews.
That being said, I do think it’s convenient to be able to flip through the material in the way that you can with a book. Extracting information from a podcast with the same precision would require scrubbing through hours of audio.
With a book it’s all right there in front of you. Plus you can easily highlight sections, save them, share them and all that. For that reason I think it’s worthwhile to get the book.
Tools of Titans is available on Amazon and in most bookstores. Enjoy and happy reading.
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